Treehouse

New owners are riding on Treehouse's old reputation, while releasing (VERY RARELY) new courses that are about 10% of the quality of what the platform used to produce. I used to be enrolled in one of the techdegree programs (full stack javascript), and... Read More paused my account temporarily when staff kept saying that they were working hard to release new react courses (because in 2022 they're trying to sell a program that teaches React 16 from 2017). When you're partway through the program, you almost feel compelled to finish it. After 6 months (?!) of waiting, they let us know that they finally had content ready. I unpaused my account, paid $200 for the month, and was greeted by 2 hours of the most poorly filmed and produced course I've seen. It's like there are 100 cuts per 5 minute video clips. I feel extremely let down, and a bit scammed. 6 months of interrupted study time and they release a course that looks like it was slapped together over the weekend. If you're considering a career change - you can find MUCH better for MUCH less.

THIS IS NOT FOR FULL-STACK JS. IT'S FOR PHP BUT COULDN'T FIND AN OPTION I started with Treehouse PHP tech degree class about 2 months ago, in the beginning, they started off explaining things very well, but as the course advanced and more advanced topics... Read More hit, the quality of the lessons were.. terrible, the instructor was adding a bunch of codes with out really explaining the logic behind it. and I'm finding quite a few students in the comments under the lessons complaining about the same thing.

I accidentally signed up for a monthly subscription to the full stack javascipt techdegree, I have to say the Team Treehouse curriculum is excellent! The HTML & CSS isn't touched on heavily in this track but they got other small lessons you can access... Read More on that subject. The videos are top quality and the way you can work on the projects side by side in the video through the browser is great. The slack channels for communicating real time with other students and staff is very helpful. They also have quizes like Codecademy shines with and i love the real world projects that reflect the freeCodeCamp projects and Codecademy. I am gearing up for a full time online live immersion with Actualize Bootcamp. I am not sure how much job support they have because I am currently working on completing this techdegree.

I thrive in self paced online classes, so this was a perfect course platform for me. I was motivated by the timeline and points accumulation that shows your progress. I had a slow start at first because I could not dedicate 8 hours a day (my preferred... Read More learning time reserve) but eventually as I got through the program I was so excited to finish that every hour became more productive than the last. There is a lot of community support through Slack, and there are A LOT of questions already answered in forums so I could almost always find answers to my questions in real time by being resourceful. I have not yet landed a job but I am working on a few freelance projects. I still use the site for continuing education - I'm addicted to earning more credentials. They also have a referral program so you can receive a discount on the monthly or annual costs by referring new students. If you decide to sign up, use my referral link http://referrals.trhou.se/awdev.

I was curious and SwitchUp had a 7 day free trial offer...I signed up to see what it was all about. Took the very basic HTML/CSS course (refresher for someone out of it for a long time). It was simply put together and didn't dally (a real plus!) with... Read More some quick quizzes to make sure you were listening. Will I do another? Maybe (time is the challenge) but learned there is something like this out there...useful to fill in some quick info and how-to's.

I'm just leaving a review because a) I've found something that's helped me and I wanted to share it, and b) there's a bit of a problem when you try to find reviews from this company. I'll address that first. teamtreehouse offer what's called an affiliate... Read More scheme, much like udemy or web hosting companies. Affiliates get given links, and if a user uses that link to sign up, they get paid. That's created something of a glut of overly positive reviews ranking all over google and twitter that really have a vested interest in you clicking the link. On the opposing team are people who are ideologically against paying a subscription and tend to voice that opinion (excessively imho) on forums like reddit. As I have no ideological or financial interest, and really just want to learn to code, here's what I thought of treehouse for learning web development:

Based on my experience of top rated udemy courses, freecodecamp, edx, coursera lynda and pluralsight, the quality of the content really is top notch. The detail is right up there at pluralsight levels (with better presentation) and eclipses easily most of the rest. It's worth pointing out though that edx and coursera are offering typically university courses, and they focus more on an academic approach - theory over syntax for example. Treehouse is squarely in the technical college camp - give you the skills to get a job tomorrow, not to continue your studies on to a PHD.

To compare content to Udemy, following the front end web dev track on treehouse is equivalent imho to somewhere around 3 courses of content. I base that number squarely on the fact that I'd completed 4 40hr+ udemy courses on web dev prior to trying treehouse on a whim and still learning new things. It's also rapidly updated to match what's current - no buying a 2014 course and finding it has nothing on bootstrap 4 or flexbox for example. Compared to freecode camp, it's tough. There's definitely a lot more information and fine detail in the videos than in the freecodecamp materials, but it does lack the big challenges that really push you. Free code camp really is one of those that plants a seed in the tutorial and then sets you a challenge expecting you to go off and grow it yourself. I would say whilst the detail isn't as great, if you complete the challenges and fully apply yourself, freecodecamp would be result in a pretty equal knowledge level, but again, you have to find a lot of that knowledge yourself.

Should you buy it? Boy that's a tough one. There's a free trial but it's only 7 days now ( presumably too many people were signing up for month trails back to back until they ran out of unsigned up credit cards lol). It is, IMHO unquestionably worth $25 a month. However, that depends on a couple of things - are you out of work? it money a bit of a struggle? It's fine if that's the case, we've all been there, but freecodecamp is probably a better place to be. Also, the per month thing adds a time limit; do you have the free time? Honestly if you can only manage to set aside 3-5 hours a week, then $25/mo actually starts to become very expensive when you look at the cost per lesson. In that case, again freecodecamp, but maybe look at Udemy. They always have $10 sales, so you can get 3 or 4 top web dev courses for less than 2 months of treehouse and study them whenever you can.

Barring those two factors, my opinion is that freecodecamp and treehouse combined really do give you everything you need to become a web developer and are my recommendation. Really though it's on you. You have to put the hours in. If you're going to sign up for treehouse, don't let it become a gym membership you never use, commit to coding an hour or more a day. If you can do that, then those siren songs of getting a junior dev job in 3-6 months of study are totally realistic. Can you do it all on your own for free? Absolutely! But it is harder, more frustrating and hard to be as complete. If it's financially viable to you, it enables you to pend more time learning and less time finding what you need to learn.

Not worth the money, this company is more interested in advertising and having a clean interface than the substance of their courses. Do yourself a favour and spend time looking for information written by impassioned hobbyists who are interested in teaching.... Read More This is nothing but a cash cow.

I tried to learn using free online courses and books, and I used to just code by examples from different parts of the web like how to do lightboxes using javascript -- But, without knowing elements, properties, variables etc, it was frankly hard to try... Read More to build a website.

I took the sample free trial from teamtreehouse.com and was able to create proper structure and syntax in programming HTML and CSS. It was almost the end of my free trial but I wanted more so I went and got their monthly thing ... I mean its $25 a month and you can only gain knowledge, right? It took me about 2 months, doing part time hours, to finish their Front End Development Track. Some tutorials were just a refresher to me and others were completely new. This was back in 2013-2014 so glad I did it. The pace was perfect, whether you're a pro at a subject or a beginner. And I could simply speed up a track if I knew what the topic was. And they have sample codes at the end of each track and quizzes to test you.

At the end you get points, badges and achievements which really helped me want to learn more. Finally, they have leaderboards, daily, weekly, monthly and all time for the competitive souls - I, for one, was able to get to the top 10's of daily and weekly but not monthly because I have another full time day job so I cannot commit all hours taking the class - so it was fulfilling to see yourself in the leaderboards.

At the height of my achievements, I devoted myself to creating a project that took so much of my time and effort. But then I got busy at work (and we are expecting a child), so I cancelled my monthly subscription ... (clear throat) Ehem, they did not really cancel my account, they simply froze/pause it to continue at a later time. So fast forward to today's time, its the new year, January 8, 2017 to be exact. My new years resolution is to continue at the pace I left and get myself active again and learn more language - this time, I'm eyeing a full stack of Mean and Phyton. I had an issue with billing, I updated my old free trial account and didn't see my previous 8K+ achievements so I contacted teamtreehouse on a Sunday afternoon if they can fix it. Guess what! I was emailed several hours later and it was solved. Holy Guacamole on the service. I love these guys! I can only say excellent things about them ... in terms of the quality of the courses, I'm sure some people will say its great others will say its blah --- its all personal perspective. I know that it caters to learning, and I find it really friendly and detailed. They have a trial ... take advantage of it!!!

My background: Degree in math/computer science 1978 from UC Boulder. Software developer off and on since then. Many languages and platforms.
TreeHouse 'iOS Development with Swift 2.0' track (currently consisting of 15 modules) is exceptional.
Each module... Read More builds on the previous ones in a manner that makes it easy to absorb Swift and and its concepts.
I have taken the Stanford iOS classes on iTunes. They are fantastic for understanding the components of developing an iOS app.
These treehouse modules fill in the gap of really understanding Swift - protocols, delegates, generics, closures, etc.
I used to joke that I dreamed in Pascal. These modules lend themselves to becoming fluent in this new language.

In a world of free resources, codeacademy, khan academy, coursera, and many others - do you really need to pay for an online course? Hopefully this treehouse review helps you along the way with your decision:

1) Free trial - do it. Try it out before committing.... Read More Overall, I think Treehouse is worth it for those who want a detailed, guided experience, and to work through a very systematic approach to basic coding skills and web dev skills - but definitely not enough to take you to a full time job. I think that an in-person coding school might be better if you want a job and they provide pre-work that is very similar to what you'd do at Treehouse.

2) Not all courses are as good. I've tried out a lot of different tracks, and found that some courses are much better than others - make sure that you

3) Compare with other online courses. Try also codeacademy, khan academy, and coursera - different people learn differently and you may find treehouse works well for you, you may not.

4) Don't get trapped into monthly subscriptions and not use it - pause your account if you need. Make sure you are getting your money's worth. If you are not committed to learning and are just trying out. Treehouse is not the place - you should try out cheaper free courses first.

Conclusion: treehouse is great and very well designed, but I personally prefer to find free things to supplement my learning. I would do it again and would recommend to those who are seriously committed to learning (not experimentation stage).

Tip: Supplement treehouse with a coding bootcamp before applying for jobs - that is if you can afford to!